Friday, November 4, 2011

On our last trip to the east coast we found the best doughnut I have had to date. That was at Doughnut Plant in New York City. On this trip I was hoping to have similar success with another east coast donut favorite, Kane's. We rented a car, and on our way to New Hampshire, we stopped by to see what all the fuss was about, at this local favorite.

Kane's has been in business since 1955. In that time they have made quite a reputation for themselves. Bon Appetit has named them one of the top ten donut shops in the US. The show, "Donut Paradise", featured them as one of their top donut destinations. With all of this praise I was getting very excited to see what they had to offer.

We arrived at about eleven on a Friday morning. There was not much around Kane's. They are located in a neighborhood, in what could have been a converted house. The crowd was dominated by seniors sipping coffee, gossiping, and eating donuts. The selection of donuts was pretty impressive, so it took us some time to decide what we wanted. The counter girl was very patient with us, and this is what we came up with.

One of my favorite donuts is a Cinnamon Crumb, and that was the case here as well. This donut was not greasy like the ones I am used to. It had more of a cake texture without being dry. The cinnamon was subdued, but still noticeable. I also enjoyed the size of this as well. Much bigger than the ones at home.

Chocolate Honey Dipped was the next one that we tried. This one was good as well. Not too heavy, but still flavorful, this was baked perfectly.

The donut parade rolls on with the Frosted Donut. This was like a Krispy Kreme, but better. It was lighter than most glazed donuts I have had. The donuts here really impressed me with their lightness, and the lack of grease, but the best one was coming up next.

This is what people come to Kane's for, the Coffee Rolls. This one was huge, as you can see compared to Katie's hand. They were out of the frosted ones when we got here, so we had to settle for the cinnamon one. I was not too upset about that. This was served to us in a cake box, and we did not even make a dent in this thing. The taste of this was very good. I can definitely see people serving this as breakfast over the holidays. It had a homey kind of feel to it. We carried it back with us on the subway, and watched all of the Bostonians eyeball that thing. Well worth the trip.

Kane's Donuts was not as good as Doughnut Plant, but it was pretty close. Next time we are there we will have to have the Boston Cream Pie donut, and the Nut Crunch looked promising as well. Who am I kidding, I will definitely just have to get a dozen assorted to sample them all. It was well worth renting the car.

Out of five Scrabble tiles, (because Saugus is home to a world record holder in the game Scrabble, holding records for highest game score and highest word score ever), five being best to zero being worst, Kane's Donuts gets 3.5 Scrabble tiles.